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Drop a Rotary In It

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·50m 39s·analyzed·Apr 13, 2016
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Hosts explore pinball market dynamics, Pinball 2000 history, and innovative arcade venue concepts.

Summary

Chris and Jared discuss personal topics (car troubles, sports) before pivoting to pinball history, particularly the rise and fall of Williams/Bally and the Pinball 2000 era. They analyze why boutique manufacturers are entering the market, explore Japan's emerging pinball scene, and brainstorm creative arcade business models including mobile pinball trucks and food-truck partnerships.

Key Claims

  • The The Addams Family massive success actually contributed to the decline of Williams and Bally because operators made so much money on it they didn't want to replace it with new machines

    medium confidence · Chris discussing an article about Pinball 2000, citing the claim that The The Addams Family became 'the death nail for Bally and Williams'

  • The The Addams Family was released, there were nine pinball companies producing machines

    medium confidence · Chris referencing article about Pinball 2000 era dynamics

  • Pinball 2000 failed partly because the playfield action (ramps, toys) was at the back of the machine, which the hologram projections obscured in darkness

    high confidence · Chris analyzing Pinball 2000 design: 'when you're playing a pinball machine...all the cool stuff' is at the back, 'let's put it all in the dark so you can't see any of it'

  • South Park pinball outsold Pinball 2000 machines during the same period

    high confidence · Chris citing article: 'its sales were being clinched by South park...an conventional pinball machine which made non-stop fart noises'

  • Modern boutique pinball manufacturers are entering the market because they're people who played pinball as kids/college students and now have disposable income and want to own modern machines

    high confidence · Chris and Jared discussing article about new manufacturers: 'we are cycling back into the phase where those people like me...are coming back in and going, you know what? I've got more money now'

  • Jersey Jack Pinball has created a separate module called 'Pindemption' for redemption arcade operations

    high confidence · Jared: 'jay-z jack have actually made a separate module in their pinball machines called Pindemption, which is geared towards those sites'

  • All modern Stern machines have ticket interface capability, and even SAM-era Sterns could accept ticket interfaces via serial port

    high confidence · Jared explaining modern Stern ticket capabilities: 'pretty much every Stern machine that was from SAM onwards had a ticket interface'

Notable Quotes

  • “I'll drop a rotary in it and I'll start racing right”

    [name withheld pending review] @ ~8:45 — Humorous reference to car modification culture; also the source of the episode title 'Drop a Rotary In It'

  • “Williams being their own worst nightmare”

    Chris @ ~22:30 — Summary of the article's thesis about Addams Family's paradoxical effect on the company

  • “where's all the fun stuff? Where's all the ramps? Where's all the toys, typically? At the back of the machine...And what happened with Pinball 2000? Hey, let's put it all in the dark so you can't see any of it.”

    Chris @ ~28:00 — Core analysis of why Pinball 2000's hologram effect was gameplay-limiting

  • “That should be printed on a T-shirt...How hard could it be?”

    Jared (responding to Chris's joke about boutique manufacturers) @ ~38:30 — Self-aware commentary on boutique manufacturer startup attitude

  • “If you're just doing, you know, pushing the store buttons, just swiping off my phone, ooh. Yeah. Yeah, eventually you're going to forget about that.”

    Chris @ ~78:00 — Observation about how cashless payment systems change player behavior/spending

Entities

Chris FriebuspersonJared MorganpersonWilliamscompanyBallycompanyStern PinballcompanyJersey Jack PinballcompanySpooky PinballcompanyThe Addams Familygame

Signals

  • ?

    historical_signal: Analysis suggesting Addams Family's profitability discouraged operator investment in newer titles, contributing to Williams/Bally decline

    medium · Chris citing article: 'because there were so many Adams families out there, that none of the operators really cared to replace it with anything new because they were earning tons of money'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Pinball 2000 represented significant technical achievement (hologram/Pepper's ghost effects) but failed due to gameplay fundamentals—obscuring back-playfield action where the main game elements resided

    high · Chris's detailed analysis of layout problems: 'they did a remarkable job...but what they failed to realize was...when you're playing a pinball machine...all the fun stuff...at the back of the machine...let's put it all in the dark so you can't see any of it'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Shift in Chris's appreciation of Pinball 2000 games through repeated league play exposure; initially negative on Revenge of Mars, now recognizes quality

    high · 'I never liked episode one...But since then, I've played it at League a couple of times. And I do realize that, hey, it's a pretty good table'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Boutique pinball manufacturers are primarily entrepreneurs from the same nostalgic generation as their target customers—players who grew up with 1980s-1990s pinball and now have capital and design ambition

    high · Jared: 'in terms of these companies you're also dealing with the exact same age bracket it was hey i had a ton of fun playing these when i was in college...I want to have a ton of fun again, but I want to create now'

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.152

0:00
This is the Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. You are listening to the Blockade Podcast. I am your host, Chris Freebus, aka Shut Your Trap. Joining me as always from down under, Jared Morgan.
0:41
G'day, how's it going? Just peachy. I was mentioning to you right before this started that I was watching, if you call it watching, the Laker game on my Twitter feed. this is Kobe's second to last game and it's the only way that I get to watch the Lakers for the most part because I happen to be on Dish Network the only provider in Southern California that does not carry any of the Laker games right but that's okay they're so horrible it's not like I'm missing much anyway and the fortunately his unfortunately his final game is on being carried on ESPN so I'll be able to actually watch that. Cool. I'm more interested in the fact of watching somebody that's been on the same team for 20 years, who's been so like anti-fun, you might say. I mean, Kobe doesn't, he doesn't fall into the whole parade mentality, except for this year, he happened to finally embrace it. And so it'll be interesting to see if he actually shows emotion in the final game, or if he just goes off, or I'm very curious to see if the other team just kind of lets him have his way. I don't know. It's one of those curiosities for me to cap off what has been an absolutely miserable, miserable season.
2:06
I don't really do sports ball that much. Well, and especially I'm sure you don't really do American sports. So, no, I'm not hoping to have a conversation with you about this. We do see it on the screens here at LabRose because we've got feeds from all the pay TV networks here and we see it. We've actually been watching a lot of baseball on the screens here at the moment america's favorite pastime allegedly allegedly until you talk about the nfl and nba but that's okay so yes we've been seeing a fair bit of that like and there's some big fans of it here in australia like there's a couple of guys in the office that rabbit about it so it's interesting imagine in terms of uh you know online gambling for sports baseball's kind of a bread and butter it's pretty good there's usually a lot of what they call markets for it um and uh a lot of different options you can bet on for it. It's very popular. It's a well-known sport and therefore the markets and information about it is really good from a bookmaker's perspective.

  • Japan has historically been a 'dead zone' for pinball with virtually no presence

    medium confidence · Chris: 'Japan has fancily been known as the dead zone for pinball. There's nothing pinball there.'

  • A new arcade in Japan opened with 100 pinball machines, mostly modern Sterns plus classics, and is drawing significant new player interest including first-time players

    medium confidence · Chris: 'they've got an arcade that opened up, 100 Machines...opening up and it's gathering a large following'

    • Pinball 2000
    product
    Attack from Marsgame
    Revenge From Marsgame
    Star Wars Episode Igame
    South Parkgame
    Nick Baldridgeperson
    [name withheld pending review]person
    Time Zonevenue
    Death Valley Records and Tapesvenue
    Pay Rangeproduct
    Coin Box Pinball Podcastorganization
    Gary Sternperson

    venue_signal: Modern arcade survival requires mixed-service business models (bar + arcade, or arcade + food service); standalone arcades are not viable

    high · Jared: 'when you're setting up an arcade, you really need to have it as mixed business. So you need to have arcade machines and something else, like a bar or a pizza shop or something'

  • ?

    operational_signal: Pay Range and similar cashless systems are changing player behavior—removing friction of coin counting leads to increased spending and engagement

    high · Chris: 'when you sit there and play pinball arcade it's so easy to just hit the restart button...you're not thinking about how many coins...you're shoving in...you feel your pocket getting significantly lighter'

  • $

    market_signal: Japan emerging as new pinball market after being a 'dead zone'; single 100-machine arcade in Japan attracting significant new player base including first-time pinball players

    medium · Chris: 'Japan...opened up...100 Machines. Most of the new sterns...gathering a large following...people in Japan have never played before'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Jersey Jack Pinball's Pindemption module represents manufacturer response to operator demand for dual-play capability (casual/tournament and redemption)

    high · Jared: 'jay-z jack have actually made a separate module...called Pindemption, which is geared towards those sites who actually just want to run it as a redemption machine'

  • ?

    technology_signal: Stern SAM-era machines and modern games support plug-and-play ticket interfaces via standardized serial connections, enabling operators to retrofit existing machines for redemption play

    high · Jared: 'pretty much every Stern machine that was from SAM onwards had a ticket interface...you could buy and it just plugged in through a serial port'

  • ?

    community_signal: Independent pinball content creators (Coin Box Pinball Podcast team) are integrating cashless payment and remote management capabilities into routed machines, enabling promotion and tournament setup without on-site visits

    high · Jared: 'Pay Range is a service that the guys at the coin box pinball podcasts are doing with their routed games...they can like set the games up for like tournaments without even going there'

  • ?

    rumor_hype: Chris recalls seeing or hearing about a 'pinball truck' mobile venue concept that brings machines to food truck events, but cannot verify current status or details

    low · Chris: 'I can swear I saw somebody had a pinball truck...I think they had like six machines...bring the pinball to the people...I don't know if this was just a promotional thing'

    • 3:07
    I've been having a not fun week. A not fun week? Yeah, a not fun week. I think I mentioned it last time I'd gotten the bad news about my car.
    3:21
    This was when it was this is not when it was actually like when you had an accident with it no this is uh the oil pressure completely going oh yeah that's not a good thing no so took it to the mechanic and eleven hundred dollars later uh you need a new engine so i mean well i really spit my coffee out Right. Now, that's a bit crap. On an 11-year vehicle that's got 107,000 miles on it. Yeah, I don't think I'm necessarily going to be picking that. Throwing a new engine in that one. No. So I decided, okay, what the heck? Let's try throwing it up on Craigslist. And maybe I can – I'm not going to make a profit off of this, but at least I can maybe get enough to pay the, you know, the bill.
    4:19
    Yeah. If I get one and a half for it. Right. And I, and I asked them because typically like scrap prices, you know, they'll give you 500 bucks and that's it.
    4:29
    So, and I even asked the mechanic and he was just kind of like, he goes, just scrapyard. You go, everything else would be too much of a hassle. You're not going to get any money for it. Blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, but it's an old five Cooper ass. and apparently they're big among the racing community uh and the modders so like i said i was like in a fit of frustration i was like let's just throw something up on the on the web see what happens within 12 hours i'd gotten eight people that wanted to see it i'd already gotten a couple of offers thrown at me like sight unseen you know kind of low ball and so i was like all jazz i was like okay sweet i'll be able to dump this really fast like have everybody come down to the mechanic tomorrow they can take a look and buy it and i can just take the cash and hand it right over to him you know and i listed it for 2500 oh yeah wow for cooper is that's that doesn't work for the shell yeah of the cooper is like there are people out there to go whatever i'll drop a rotary into it and i'll start racing right so that night on friday night i was all okay let me let me get my paperwork make sure that i'm cool with understanding how to actually transfer title and all that. And I kept on coming across this one little teensy rule in California.
    5:43
    California, we've got some pretty heavy smog regulations. Basically, we're the heaviest in the country, and because we sell so many darn cars here, though, the auto manufacturing industry tends to make all their cars compliant with California, and therefore it's beautiful all the way across the country. Everyone else is good-ass. Right.
    6:06
    Well, it turns out that when you're selling a vehicle, you actually have to have it smogged before being able to transfer title.
    6:16
    Basically, it's a lemon law. It's so that the person doesn't get hosed, right? Your car at the moment has very, very good smog emission levels.
    6:24
    It doesn't run at all. It is compliant. Right? So therein lies the problem. It's like, well, I can't get it smogged, So I can't sell it? And so I was looking, and it was like, well, what if I get somebody to sign, and I understand that the motor doesn't work, I need to replace it, and waive you of your rights of having to do that. Nope, doesn't matter. I am responsible for it. So all the sales, people that I was hoping to meet up on Saturday and sell this thing had to cancel it all. And now I'm going to have to go to the DMV on Monday and declare my car non-operational. Non-operational. By doing that, then I can sell the vehicle as non-operational, and it's up to that person to then... Bring it up to smog regulation. Exactly. So, you know, proper rotary, then.
    7:29
    Yeah. So the thing is, though, by now, by today, I've had probably 15, 16 inquiries about it. I've had a couple of people that are sight unseen trying to offer me money for it, but they're all around between 1,000 and 1,500.
    7:48
    So I'm sitting there going, maybe I asked too little. I don't know. Maybe you should put five on it and then go down to two and a half. Well, I already posted them. That's the problem. You can take it down. I know, but I've got all these people. So I'm just like, you know what, I'm not gonna hose my karma here, whatever. What I'm what I am hoping for is that maybe multiple people show up at the same time and they can get into a little bidding work. I've heard this happening with pinball machines on Craigslist. So if you go along, it's like, the dude is selling it is just like, Oh, yeah. Well, you know, just get some popcorn and just wait for the final. You know, it's interesting. When I bought my machine, the... Yeah. Again, I looked up on Craigslist. I see this thing, it's 500 bucks. I'm like, no way is this still available. Let's call. And I called, turns out he just put it up that day. He'd gotten already 13 calls about it. He had somebody that was going to be showing up at 6 p.m. to buy it.
    8:57
    He basically told me, he goes, hey, if you can get here before then, it's yours. He goes, but I'm not... That's the price.
    9:06
    $500. I boogied on down there and I was looking at it. I was like, hey, can I take off the... Take off the... No, the glass itself. He was like, nope.
    9:22
    He was like, what you see, that's it you know he let me turn it on let me play a few games um but yeah wasn't wasn't gonna let me inspect it because as far as he was concerned i've already got somebody that's gonna buy this thing so i don't need to cater for anybody but i've got a number of people who want this so yeah yeah and it was one of those things too where it was like after i got out into the sunlight that's when i saw all the problems with the play field and you know yeah when i got at home and was you know cracked open the back glass that's when you uh you know notice oh i've got the wrong soundboard.
    9:56
    But it is one of those things where, too, it's like, yeah, on one hand, you would think you would have a position to stand on and say, yeah, I'll give you $300 for it. But on the other hand, it's like, no.
    10:09
    No, thank you. Next. Next person wanting to pay me $500. Thank you. Yeah. And that's kind of what my opinion is with the car. It's like, hey, first one to pony up the $2,500 wins. but if there happens to be multiple people there.
    10:24
    But somebody, I'm kind of frustrated about this, actually went to the mechanic where my car is to check it out. And they texted me and they were like, hey, I'm still interested. And I'm like, was the mechanic cool with you showing up? Because I don't think they would be. And he was like, well, no, I only was able to look at it from the outside. Like, okay, so now I'm curious when I go in on Monday if I'm going to get any flack from the mechanic.
    10:53
    Because I realize I probably... It's probably a bad form to try and sell it while it's still on his lot. I'm probably going to have to take it, have it towed home, and then sell it here at home. Probably. Yeah. So I got to work that out with him. You might have to buy him a case of beer.
    11:10
    Sorry, dude. Here's a case of Sierra Nevada. Yeah. Have a nice day. yeah well i don't think i'm gonna be doing that with you know what i owe him yeah it's actually you know he kind of got the labor costs on me he's one and a half grand deal with it yeah exactly exactly yeah yeah so i'm sure we'll be fine with it sure um so i was flitting through twitter i retweeted it uh there was an interesting thing that kind of popped up with uh it's basically referring to zen and their virtual uh pinball with the oculus rift and it was an article entitled uh can pinball ever trust vr again and i went oh that's kind of interesting but it was like when did vr ever was an issue for pinball trusted yeah i was like Are we going back to virtual boy days? Was there a pinball machine with that little Nintendo thing that everybody was like, ah, it's horrible? I don't know. There was. There actually was a pinball machine. Was there a pinball on it? Yes, there was. It was pretty terrible, apparently.
    12:19
    As an aside, and this won't take long, Nick Baldrige, who does the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast, he announced in one of his now far less frequent episodes that he does, because he's hit 365, he actually doing a short run podcast on virtual boy games he said it a 15 episode podcast Yeah Because there 15 games
    12:45
    So he's going to be analyzing each one in depth. And it's, it's one of those things that retro gaming is, is big. Again, I actually follow Andrew driver who, for those who don't know, it's how on blockade forums. And he's well and truly into retro gaming. and I see some pretty cool stuff coming through at speed.
    13:07
    Anyhow, back to the story. Yeah, so I read through the article kind of going, I don't know that this has ever been an issue.
    13:16
    And what they wound up pinning all of this on is Pinball 2000, saying that that was VR, for which, no. That's wrong. No. Completely different. Yeah. Yeah, not the... But what was interesting with what they started saying was, was here you had the golden age of pinball with Adam's family starting it. And they said that was actually kind of the death nail for Bally and Williams. And their argument was, was because there were so many Adam's families out there, that none of the operators really cared to replace it with anything new because they were earning tons of money on Adam's family. And so that became the decline of sales for new tables.
    14:09
    And then they also said, because at that time, they said when Adam's Family was released, there was nine pinball companies producing machines.
    14:17
    And so you had just a ton of machines out there. These things were being built like tanks by this point. And Bally and Williams had all the designers, essentially. So they were hoarding them all. And so that started kind of what was knocking down the other manufacturers.
    14:36
    But yeah, it became this thing of Williams being their own worst nightmare. And then they mentioned about how, I believe it was Papadeic, that came in with this virtual pinball, basically, or the hollow pin thing is what it was called, and presented it. And Williams was like, boom, yes, love it. That's what we're going whole hog on. So the history of it, I kind of find it interesting. It's like, wait, was that actually true or not? But then what they pointed out with the Pinball 2000 was, you know what, they did a remarkable job for a company that was used to just doing dot matrix to also do these animated holograms. They did a really strong job on the look of it. But what they failed to realize was, and this is what completely makes sense to me, when you're playing a pinball machine, where's all the fun stuff? Where's all the ramps? Where's all the toys, typically? At the back of the machine. All the way at the back. Right. And what happened with Pinball 2000? Hey, let's put it all in the dark so you can't see any of it. Yeah.
    15:49
    Yes. In most cases, yeah, it was pretty dark at the back there. And, of course, that's where all the – in most cases, there was some sort of jump ramp and stuff up there. And there was a lot of – all the guts was at the back. It was basically like each play field that they had was like Attack for Mars in its layout and the fact that everything was at the back of the play field, all the cool stuff. Except they – yeah, they just projected a hologram, Pepper's ghost, actually, over it effect. And, yeah, they had to be black to do it. and it was fun. I actually liked both of those machines quite a bit. I never liked episode one. I've since played. Because I had Jar Jar Binks in it. No one likes that. That wasn't the reason. It's so simplistic. It's just shoot this target, shoot this target, shoot this target.
    16:42
    No, can something good happen, please? And with that one specifically, I really felt that. well, I'm not seeing anywhere where the ball's traveling. You just go behind this curtain of hologram, and that's the end of it. So it kind of killed my interest in it. And with Revenge from Mars, I thought that was the case with me. But since then, I've played it at League a couple of times. And I do realize that, hey, it's a pretty good table. And it's very similar to Attack from Mars, truthfully, in shots. So, you know, I learned to embrace actually watching the screen and seeing what was going on on the screen and getting a humor out of that.
    17:26
    It goes against what Gary Stern likes to say about pinball. The action is on the play field. Well, in this case, the action is kind of suspended above the play field because that's what the focus was. It's funny that in the article, the article states that players and owners didn't seem to take to Pinball 2000. Adding insult to injury, its sales were being clinched by Seagate South park yeah an conventional pinball machine which made non-stop fart noises that pretty much says it all really doesn't it it's a yeah it just reminds me of idiocracy we're here now it's in 1999 yeah i was gonna say we're in idiocracy right now if you've followed any of our politics we will be watering plants with Gatorade in no time soon yeah the it was kind of interesting I didn't realize that South Park had come out that exact same time as the Pinball 2000 tables but you look at South Park and say what you will about the gameplay because I think the gameplay is horrible but it looks cool I mean it just looks cool it does yeah absolutely i'm just reading through the article more about um it's a strange article it's saying um uh about the entrance to of the other players into pinball with the resurgence is happening like jazzy jack spooky the article is quite surprised that these people are actually or these companies are actually entering the pinball arena. They can't understand why they're doing it.
    19:15
    And I think maybe it actually says it later on in the article, but it's about the fact that, you know, we are cycling back into the phase where those people like me who had a misspent youth and spent a lot in the arcades are coming back in and going, you know what? I've got more money now, theoretically. um i've got room in my house that i can put one of these in and um i want to own one and i want to own one that's modern um so i mean well that's the customer base but i think in terms of these companies you're also dealing with the exact same age bracket it was hey i had a ton of fun playing these when i was in college then i went and had you know tried to you know have a career or whatever and now it's like, well, I want to have a ton of fun again, but I want to create now. I want to build this for myself. I want to be the people. Exactly. I want to be the guy who's making these. Exactly. I'm bummed that this opportunity was never there as I was growing up, you know, to be mentored by any of these people. So screw it. We're going to start our own company and figure this out. We're just going to do it. We're going to make a pinball because how hard could it be? Yeah. Right?
    20:25
    Yeah. That should be printed on a T-shirt and put on all the backs of all these what they affectionately call boutique pinball manufacturers.
    20:36
    Yeah, pinball, making pinballs easy. Right, right. Another thing that I saw on Twitter that was, I wound up retweeting. So, Japan has fancily been known as the dead zone for pinball. There's nothing pinball there. Well, apparently, they've got an arcade that opened up, 100 Machines. Most of the new sterns, plus a lot of some classic tables or whatever. But anyway, they opened up and it's gathering a large following. There's a lot of people coming in and taking an interest to it and going, oh, okay.
    21:14
    I think some people in Japan have never played before and this is their first exposure to it. Like kids who've never seen a pinball machine before going into this going, wow, look at this. That's pretty awesome to actually have that effect on somebody, right? Right, and it makes me wonder, because I mean, most of the arcades now in Japan have become redemption arcades, if I'm not mistaken, right? I believe that's the case, or yes, a lot of yes, a lot of redemption. So it might be a case of separating yourself from the fray, basically. Yes, the fray, yeah. And having something unique, but it's still an arcade, which is still a huge thing in Japan. but I think it's one of those things that you're right it is quite unique and the thing is that if you wanted to make it redemption you could you could actually attach ticket um uh vending things to it or electronic well Super Mario World did that right yeah Super Mario World was first dedicated pinball redemption um uh machine um I got leave and boy did that take off the other one well it was a weird game little table um it was basically a size of a safe cracker but smaller yeah short legs um it was made for kids yeah it was a real for someone like me who of course had to play it um it was quite hard you always had to lean down and like kneel on your knees to play it it was very strange um but all the new games now even um i think jay-z jack have actually made a separate module in their pinball machines called Pindemption, which is geared towards those sites who actually just want to run it as a redemption machine. It actually changes the gameplay for time and changes the way the game plays just so it actually is redemption focused. And all the modern Sterns have ticket interfaces in their games. In fact, pretty much every Stern machine that was from SAM onwards had a ticket interface that you could buy and it just plugged in through a serial port on the board i think so you could you could plug any ticket interface in i wonder if there's any arcades out there that are doing it you know well i know that um the time zone down in surface paradise what they do is when they get new pinballs in they they run them in the like the the showcase area for the pinballs and then after they've had you know six months or something like that they move them into redemption area and because they're a swiper based um arcade right rather than actually attaching a physical ticket like vending system to oh it just adds it to your account yeah so it basically has an interface so they they plug in all their systems are actually they have a little interface board that goes inside the game and the little swipe on the front and it all just like they just plug the interface into it and it just it ticks up the amount of tickets and adds it to your card balance so it's it's trivially easy if you have something like that to turn a pinball machine into a redemption machine um and you know you can actually have people play them normally uh like you know i will would walk up to a game and play maybe a longer game but you will get a cap of x tickets for maybe getting a replay or getting an extra ball or something like that yeah um it's it's pretty easy to do it'd be basically kind of i wonder if it's kind of like uh you know a certain has the button on top that you can just push for tournament mode uh you know depending on what you want to play if it would be that words you want to play regular do you want to play redemption mode no well it's not even that it's just they every time you play like as you achieve things um tickets would spew out of the machine if you had a physical machine on it um so if you it might be score focused or it could be um it's just like playing a regular the game of pinball with the modern stones It playing a regular game of pinball but you get tickets coming out as well well i sure like that a lot better than playing skeeball so yeah that right put a like imagine just getting a whole stack of like older machines and just rigging them all up with tickets yeah and and going to town now this would be a very interesting thing to do um if you were to set up an arcade in the current sort of climate here, because what a lot of operators, certainly in Australia, and I'm sure it's the same over in America as well, they're finding that when you're setting up an arcade, you really need to have it as mixed business. So you need to have arcade machines and something else, like a bar or a pizza shop or something. so you will never be able to survive uh as an arcade alone uh unless you have some sort of service going along with it so um one of the arcade well it's not really okay it's a location let's call it um they've done something very clever and they've uh it's a bar called death valley records and tapes um so it's a bar well this is where i thought it was where you used Death Valley Tapas. I was like, ooh, yummy. Yeah, Death Valley Tapas. And I got picked up on that. So yeah, Death Valley. So they've got a local supplier that puts four machines in there. And what they do is they have a concrete pad out the back. And food trucks just pull up outside. Now, what that does is that allows them to serve liquor. Because they've got food to serve as well. But it's a really interesting idea because you could set up an arcade but have out the back space for two food vans. Because in Brisbane here, which I'm sure is the case in a lot of American cities, the food van sort of scene is pretty big. You're huge.
    27:23
    So you could either offer a regular tenancy to a food truck that is always there. Okay. or you could say on a rotating basis you have a different food truck there and you promote it and you like do deals so you come in and while they're waiting for their food they play pinball there's a real opportunity there i think um for you to set up a business really easily not have to worry about catering or setting up a kitchen or anything like that and just have a space put the arcade machines in there and then just cross promote i think if you did that you'd be on to a I would love to do something like that here.
    28:01
    Just set up something like spend $100,000, fit out a shop, get some modern sterns, a few classics, and then just promote it as a food van destination. I thought I saw somebody had a pinball truck.
    28:14
    A pinball truck? Yes, a pinball truck that they would park right by all the food trucks. So bring the pinball to the trucks. That's a great idea. I can swear I saw this. and I don't know if this was just a promotional thing that Stern was doing I'm not sure if it was even related to them but I think they had like six machines that they were able to squeeze into this thing and I think they set two of them up down on the ground and then the other four were up on the truck itself or whatever but yeah it was bringing pinball to the people I was like ooh pinball truck that's cool oh no jared's looking it up i can tell because this is this will be relevant to my interest it would cost a bomb to set something like that up um but what a great idea um no hits for that as such but i'm sure that if you saw it it's real so i believe you i don't think i dreamed it if i did patent yeah if i did i'm totally noting that that's a great idea love that idea so yeah basically drive it up level it up and have all the pinball machines just leveled although it'd be real it'd be interesting to try and transport them on the legs in a truck and not have them topple over and and all that you have well if you had the um the lifts that they put underneath the machines that lift them up the grounds to make them easily movable if you did that because that's supporting mostly under the center and then you know blocked them in that way i think that would protect them a lot better yeah it's true you could actually then sort of put it up on the on the block so i actually have like a little elevator under each one of them yeah you just hang crank up right about to leave lift them up fold the top box down and off you go yeah that'd be pretty easy to do and um yeah imagine you take it to festivals and you just roll up right up and you take it to like yeah that'd be awesome right and then you charge the kind of prices the food trucks charge you know three bucks a game or something two dollars a game well two dollars a game here in australia is pretty regular wow but yeah you would you do two dollars a game and you um put in like uh the pay the pay range system which is all bluetooth enabled and you just like have it all cashless it's all swipe your phone by it okay i'm good yeah that's the thing now like pay range is a is a service that um uh the guys at the coin box pinball podcasts are doing with their routed games so they put a little module inside the um the the game and they just sync it up to one of the um pulse lines on the coin mech yeah um so uh yeah they just oh yeah because you don't need cash and they can run promotions they can like set the games up for like tournaments without even going there i mean just think about when you sit there and play pinball arcade it's so easy to just hit the restart button or just you know you just because you're not thinking about how many coins that you're shoving in, as opposed to when you have a pocket full of them and you feel your pocket getting significantly lighter, right? So that's what I'm saying. If you're just doing, you know, pushing the store buttons, just swiping off my phone, ooh. Yeah. Yeah, eventually you're going to forget about that.
    31:31
    That would be something I'd do. Like, I wouldn't pay for a swipe card system. I'd just get a whole, like, pile of pay range systems and just chuck them into the games. And then no matter where the game went, it would be part of the Morgans pinball empire.
    31:49
    And it would just be like I could actually put up a website and say, look, my pinballs are here, here, and here. If you go to this site, use pay range, you get two games for the price of one for your first swipe or whatever. Like you said, then you're able to go where the action is. If there's a special event happening or if there's a certain weekend where some event is happening outdoors or whatever, Yeah, you pull up, here we go, you know, instead of making everybody come to you. You could drive around. You could drive around to all of the markets and actually have pinball at the markets.
    32:24
    And it would cost a lot to do the truck up. But if you were able to, like, get a standard size sort of, sort of like removal van size, like a Pantech truck, and then just, like, ruggedize it and have enough pinballs in there to, like, you know, do it. So basically I have one row of pinballs and then enough room for people to walk and just have the side open basically and have it all. People would just walk up to whichever one and then walk out easily. Yeah. That would be pretty wicked. Spend $500. I wonder how much it would cost to fit a truck out like that. Like probably $200,000 to get it really good.
    33:02
    Somebody make it happen and then let us know how much. Yeah. And then we'll honestly steal your idea in all the other cities that we live in and make pinball available to everybody at all things. Yes. Yeah. Blockade on the road. You can see it now. Oh, imagine that. Yeah. It's pretty cool to do. Imagine that would be great. And then, you know, as pinball, like if pinball waned again, you could just put arcade machines in it and just turn it around. Yeah. Well, they already do that for birthday parties. Basically, they've got PlayStations and Xboxes loaded up with a whole bunch of screens and all-Ion connection, and then just a big old frag fest for your 10-year-old.
    33:47
    That's pretty cool. Yeah. That's definitely a thing. It would be pretty awesome. I'd love to do that.
    33:55
    Hey, so we've got another table of the week to announce. Oh, okay. so we're down to three I'm saving the last two because I hate the last two so we're going to go for Junkyard this week Junkyard we'll be playing Junkyard which you know this kind of was a good summation of all of our pinball that we've played so far seeing as how it's an amalgamation of so many different tables and sound packages it is there's a lot of yeah shout outs to a lot of different tables in that yeah so that's we're going to play Junkyard this week and that's going to pretty much leave Class of 1812 and Black Knight for the final two weeks.
    34:39
    Yeah. Can you imagine why I didn't pick that one? Yes, exactly. I hate that game so much. I do want to remind people if you would like to host your own month of tables and host your own tournament of tables now is the time to get a hold of me and get serious about it because after this tournament that we run at the end of April, I am completely open to just turning it over to somebody else for a month and letting them have their fun.
    35:11
    Like I said, it's one of these deals where you can, it's whatever you want to do with it. Do you want to do pin golf? Do you want to do a different kind of tournament altogether? Do you want to, you know, however many tables you want to feature? I don't care. It's completely up to you. And, you know, we'll just promote it weekly. Make sure that there's an audience for it. and hopefully all the people that have been playing our Tournament of the Month this entire time would be willing to jump in and do it too. I was going to roll right into me doing Zen tables of the month, but I just kind of want a break. I feel like having a month off. After doing the amount of tables you've done, you probably wouldn't want a break. I just want a month off. It's about a year of tables now, isn't it? We've done, I think 58 tables. Over a year is worth it. That's a lot of tables. That's a long-term commitment. You know, I'm happy I stuck with it.
    36:09
    I think it's been a very good thing for the Fimble Arcade fans forum, the community that's on there. I've certainly gotten to know a few more people much better and know who was able to play how. And it's been nice to see even the players that aren't that fantastic at playing having a really good time and looking forward to the tournament on a monthly basis.
    36:34
    So that's what I stuck out for. It's for those individuals that were just plain having fun and would miss it were it gone.
    36:44
    So... I wish Farsight would rewrite their tournament engine and just make it so you could set your own. Yeah.
    36:52
    It would reinvigorate the game if they did. Because then everyone with their friends on whatever platform they're on, Steam, PSN, Android with Google Play Games. They could create their own leagues and actually use it as a league system.
    37:11
    It would be so good. There's so many different tournament software out there at the moment, which I'm sure would have probably API access to them that they could either plug into or partner with and just plug it in and let them do their own bespoke leagues. Like, really. Well, even if you think about, you know, like what World of Warcraft or EverQuest did, where you had guilds. Yes.
    37:40
    And there's so many ways that you could set up the game to allow for that kind of thing. And those communities become a life of their own.
    37:50
    And that's the opportunity. It a bummer to see opportunities just lie there on the floor that were so easy to scoop up that there already models of it out there that you can copy and and you know just be like oh we gonna be like that and you know there you go yep um but unfortunately i think yeah zen kind of paves the way on a lot of things uh because they have a much they have a much larger user base i think yeah i think they probably do they've they've been around longer i think than um far side has well they actually get you know like sales awards on the consoles because they're selling so much as opposed to i don't think farsight's ever gotten one of those on you know with uh you know being a top download or anything so yeah i think zen is on the forefront and because they don't care about that kind of thing um i mean you think you think the tournaments are bad with with farsight zen just plain barely ever does them so well we've never had them on android like there's no organized tournament there's just not a focus for them clearly right um sounds like i was reading some of the comments in um a few zen posts and stuff on their zen forums it sounds like they've got some stuff hooking up like Bobby was saying in response to somebody with the Zen VR I was having a look in that forum just to be a sticky beak and somebody was having some trouble with getting the VR working smoothly and the body was saying oh yeah what they were saying oh well how about vibe support you know for HTC right and And she was going, look, we've got a lot of projects on at the moment. I'll post if Vive becomes one of them.
    39:50
    So that was pretty much an indication that they've got a lot of stuff in the pipeline that we just aren't aware of. I mean, just look at Aliens, right? That just popped out of nowhere. There's going to be, I think 2016 is going to be a year of that type of thing for Zen. And that's something that, you know, unfortunately, I don't think Fastlight can actually keep up with as far as excitement and as far as the plans. Yeah, when the best tables have already been made, it's that case. Well, what do you have to look forward to? Well, we've got the Stern app to look forward to, but since we've heard zero about it, they're not anything to look forward to. remind me that was a they said they were going to announce something at california extreme is that right i believe that was it yes in june in june yeah so that will be interesting i think everyone's waiting with bated breath on that one um so yeah we'll see what happens in june i guess i guess i uh yeah with me having a ps4 now i kind of dipped my toe into the ps4 threads and i was just came away sorry for um farsight yeah yeah yeah pc is definitely the platform of choice for farsight um and i think yeah probably pc if you're gonna if you went brand new to the game and you've had a choice oh it's the only thing i'd recommend It really is the one to go for at the moment. I think PC is probably a solid choice if you want to go down the path of VR, should it be offered later on, because everything is PC compatible. So you would be able to probably extend what you have and make it VR ready, basically, and get all the benefits of that. Whereas on any other platform, it's basically down to the ecosystem, whether they want to support it or not and how they support it. So, yeah.
    42:07
    Yeah. PC is the way to go. PC master race. Yeah. I hate saying that too, but. PC master race. That's what my friend used to always tell me. He was like, get off the consoles, PC master race. Yeah. Yeah, that's, well, with Steam, it really is a hard sell now. Like, unless you have a particular allegiance to a certain franchise, which is console exclusive, like, PC is, yeah, it's a pretty easy argument to have. Because, you know, you can have a game PC and a home theater PC, and you can multi-use it, And it just becomes more than just a console or gaming platform. It's what you want to make of it. It's interesting enough what made when we bought the Wii U, was it two Christmases ago?
    43:06
    Well, all the games that we play on it are all Mario intense, all Nintendo exclusive. I mean, granted, all the third parties went fleeing away from it anyway. But it was like, no, this makes sense. meanwhile any game that i was had been planning on buying on the ps3 well if it was available on the pc i was just like forget it i'm getting on the pc i'm not gonna even bother why bother buying all these games that you know then it's oh well now you're onto the next system no backwards compatibility and it becomes all this you know hassle of plugging everything you're on yeah it have you got a pc 10 you're right you know it's only basically technical limitations that they can cheap you out on. The thing that I also really, really loved about Steam, it was like, oh, you mean it doesn't matter if my PC just goes kaboom?
    43:57
    I still own everything. I can still just re-download it. They're all safe. I just go and log in and I can start downloading all the things. That's pretty wicked, bro. The bad part is I fell into the trap of, oh, look at how cheap Grand Theft Auto is and look at how cheap all these old Tomb Raiders are. and then I buy them and then it's like, oh, now I got to try and make it actually run on my machine.
    44:22
    And all of a sudden, I'm downloading all these mods that make the controllers work and do the graphics better and all this other stuff. And you're just like, okay, this is a headache.
    44:34
    Welcome to the PC. Right? Yeah. Welcome to the PC. Where if you want to run anything except for the latest stuff, you have to think creatively.
    44:45
    yeah hey uh everybody you should be following us on twitter myself i am at shut your traps jared is at jared morgues most importantly though shallow that's my mouth um most of all you should follow us the blockade at blockade um there's where we give lots of notifications of uh like when this podcast is going to be recording and then you can watch us.
    45:14
    Because it's incredibly thrilling to watch two people sit. And talk. But you can chat with us in real time. Yes, you can.
    45:24
    That's good. It is good. Also, have you bought your t-shirt yet? We know you haven't because we didn't sell that many.
    45:33
    So, we know how many people we have listening. We know how many we sold the t-shirts. There's a rather large gap in between. So feel free to go over to represent.com forward slash blockade dash shirts. And there's where you can get the t-shirts in a myriad of colors with our logo on the front and on the back where it says pinball movies, snacks, but mostly pinball. Which is totally what it was today, except no snacks. although on to close out you did send me that pretty wicked list of in and out secret menu hacks yes see if you were following us on twitter you would have gotten the retweet that i did that is the ultimate secret menu of in and out burger so that next time jared comes into america and onto the west coast that he'll be armed and ready to order like a pro i'll be going straight to the wharves at san francisco and going right i would like it yeah and then quoting the menu items from my phone because i don't remember but geez there's some customizations you can do i reckon some of the like more boutique burger joints here in australia should do that they should have a secret menu because it would be it would make them infamous on the internets yeah and you would have secret lists like this and it will drive customers to go there they should do it the one that cracks me up as i've seen since uh the secret menu has become that other people post like, oh, McDonald's has a secret menu. I'm like, who cares? Who cares? It's McDonald's. And it's literally like, oh, well, they'll take the apple pie and they'll jam it in a shake and you'll mix it up. Ooh.
    47:17
    Wow. They'll take shit, put it in shit. Right? Yeah. Yay. Delicious. Whereas, you know, you can get it in and out. You can get it in the Politan shake, which is all the different delicious flavors of thick shake in one cup. And that's the sort of mixture I'm after. This is what I had when I went there last time. And I still remember it because it was fantastic. There's an old bit that Dennis Miller used to do.
    47:45
    He was talking about just really bad looking blazers. And somebody was wearing a Century 21 colored blazer, which I don't know if you remember that, but it was this mustard yellow kind of blazer. And he mentioned something about it being a short-sleeved blazer, or whatever. Anyway, the joke wound up being that the person was like, oh, I got one, and they gave me one, or buy one, get one half off. And he goes, look, if they really wanted to screw you, it would have been buy one, get two free.
    48:18
    Yeah. That always stuck with me, and I always thought that was funny. So a few years ago, I'm in Toys R Us, were doing some Christmas shopping. There were these things called Zuzu Pets. They were like these little electronic hamsters that had a little trail and everything. They were hot for all of about 15 seconds and then Toys R Us overbought and couldn't get rid of the stuff. So the following Christmas, I literally saw the sign, buy one, get two free, and I nearly lost it.
    48:49
    Yeah. Yep. Yeah, you were like, yes! Yeah. It's happened about 20 years later, but it's happened. So, yeah.
    49:00
    Well, everybody, I think that's going to be our time for this week. Thank you so much for listening. We truly do appreciate it, and we hope to catch you all again next week. Like we said, pop in for the live broadcast every Sunday, 1.30 p.m. Pacific time. And you too can, I don't know, interact with us in some fashion. It's rare that we put anybody on air, but it has been known to happen.
    49:24
    Yeah, that's right. And in the meantime, like I said, if you do want to host your own table of the week, tournament of the month, please get in contact with us and we'll put you on the right track.
    49:37
    Somebody's hungry for his breakfast. All right. We're going to let Jared go munch and we'll see you all again next week. Bye-bye. See you later, guys.
    49:50
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